Launching Gamma Mine's explorations into electronic systems music is “DRNH”, a new release from award winning artist Dave Burraston. “DRNH” continues 2016's releases from the ever-prolific artist, who has released works on labels including .MEDS, Feral Tapes, Computer Club and ALKU, this year alone.

Under his NYZ alias, Burraston studies modulation-based synthesis techniques from his Noyzelab studio, NSW, Australia. As an extension to the activities captured on “DRN4” (.MEDS, 2016), the systems utilised on “DRNH” have been broadened to include additive synthesis, ring modulation and non-linear waveshaping alongside Burraston's staple frequency modulation synthesis techniques. The following is a declassified listing of equipment used in this research:

Hinton Instruments Music Lab modular prototype

Yamaha SY99 & TG77 with cellular automata generated microtunings

MANIAC/Ulamizer-II cellular automata sequencing

Tiptop Z-DSP & Numberz with custom programs

The result is a collection of recordings which take the listener from sci-fi atmospheres (“NYZ-1_HI-SIN”) to whirring electronics (“NYZ_Z-DSP+NUMBERZ-DRN1”), playful FM studies (“FM80Pcellular”, “FM60Pcellular”) to meditative drones (“CSN2-excerpt1-mono”, “DRNH”). “DRNH” releases on 9th December 2016 on white C90 cassette and digital formats:

David Burraston’s (Dave Noyze /Noyzelab / Bryen Telko) release schedule has gathered momentum and accelerated through 2016 with a slew of cassette releases on .meds, Feral Tapes and Computer Club, and now closes the year with the inaugural release for new imprint Gamma Mine. An epic 90-minute cassette entitled ‘DRNH’ in a hand-numbered edition of 100 copies.

As a teenager I used to get stoned and go and hang out under pylons or telegraph poles and listen to the hum of pure voltage. Something about the sound of pure electricity just resonates with me profoundly. What is the appeal? Does it complete a circuit with the electrical energy in our brains? Plug us back in directly to the source?

Had NYZ’s ‘DRN’ cassettes been about back then I could have chilled at home to scratch that itch instead of of freezing my knackers off. Thankfully, now I’m a grown man and this tape exists, there’s no need for me to look like a weirdo lurking under a pylon - I can simply hit play on ye olde cassette player. Without getting too technical (for that go to theMatrixsynth feature) on ‘DRNH’ Dave essentially uses maths/ science/ generative algorithms, FM synthesis and beyond, to sculpt electricity into wondrous sonic shapes.

The tape opens with the playful and mysterious ‘NYZ-1_SHPR_mono’ which leaves some uncertainty as to how things will proceed. Then comes ‘NYZ-1_HI-SIN’ which layers frequencies that induce a weightless sensation of levitating in deep space. ‘NYZ-1_SHPR_mono’ sounds like an advanced machine language/communication like some form of futuristic Gamelan song. Then comes ‘NYZ_Z-DSP+NUMBERZ-DRN1’ which is like an amplified synthesis of sounds from the natural world as it delicately flutters and pulsates like a tiny organism revving a microscopic sized engine albeit magnified to a large, almost intimidating scale. ‘FM80Pcellular’ could be the sad song of some weeping electrons. ‘CSN2 excerpt1_mono’ sizzles and fizzles magnificently and is particularly satisfying (see stoned teens under pylons).

The titular ‘DRNH’ comprises the entire second side of the cassette. A masterful, colossal, long-form, proper epic drone work for deep listening -- and not the fluffy ambient that seems to pass for drone these days. This is the real deal, high grade, potent stuff. As brilliantly executed and nuanced as classic meditative drone works from Eliane Radigue, with the psychoactive properties of Binaural Beats but with a far more palatable “techno” sound. Each listen reveals details which previously appear to have been hidden - something like the sonic equivalent to those “Magic Eye” pictures that were all the rage in the 90’s. With eyes closed, it provides a very rewarding, introspective journey into the self. Most folks would probably insist you were either deaf, or an idiot that gets off on insipid minimalism if they heard this -- but there is way more depth than would appear on the surface, hypnotic microrhythms emerge like the fluttering and dancing of robotic like insects. It’s a deceptively vibrant, immersive sound that I wholeheartedly encourage you to plunge into. Crank up the volume and feel the bass vibrations - there are multiple layers to lock into but as a whole it certainly feels like electricity coursing through the body.

If you dug the now sold out NYZ ‘DRN4’ tape on .meds, then why not add some extra gravy. Needles to say it comes highly recommended.

Friday, 2 September 2016

BRYEN TELKO - FIND ANY TAPE HEADER
Physical Only / Ltd 100 Copies / C90 Cassette
OUT NOW on Feral Tapes!"After a killer run of tapes on labels such as Meds and Computer Club Dave Burraston (aka NYZ, Dave Noyze, Noyzelab) brings his Bryen Telko alias to Feral Tapes. Comprised of works created between 1984-2016 'Find any tape header' is a C90 of algorithmic, generative & experimental recordings. Veering between the microtonal drones of DRN4 and wacked out electronica worthy of Rephlex and Planet Mu, at 26 tracks it's a heady brew. 100 copies with insert. Covers letter press printed by Bradford's Print Project. "

"UK underground cassette imprint Feral Tapes (responsible for output from Ekoplekz, Aqua Dentata, Skeksi, Spolis & Relics, CHXFX, Roro Perrot, Hacker Farm etc.) serve up a fascinating and highly entertaining tape that collects output from David Burraston’s (aka Dave Noyze, NYZ) Noyzelab studio under his Bryen Telko alias. This is the first physical Bryen Telko release, with previous works being digital only releases. This, in contrast is analogue only i.e no digital.

Spilling from the spools are unfathomable, dynamic works spanning from 1984 through to the present day. At a whopping 26 tracks, clocking in at approximately 90 minutes running time. It’s something of a pocket anthology of Dave’s incredibly vast archive - a snapshot of the inner workings of the Noyzelab, from it’s initial base in the UK through to a transition into it’s current location in the Australian hinterlands.

Dave’s relationship with his machines/ technology is truly one of the great love affairs of the late 20th/early 21st Century. Just a peek at noyzelab.com will reveal pages, upon pages of research into chaos/ complexity, generative composition, cellular automata, an encyclopaedic knowledge of synthesis/ synthesizers and machines most electronic music producers probably aren’t even aware existed. What’s really striking about Dave’s work and most evident on ‘Find any Tape Header’ is how he uses his tools to create vibrant sound that transcends the often boring, dry academic, soulless output associated with electronic music that's created at the intersection of science and art. Sure, this is machine music and yet it’s incredibly human music -- Dave is able to communicate so much of himself in his work. Tracks with a brilliantly wicked, surreal, absurd, ludicrous sense of humour sit alongside more serious compositions, incorporating everything from dense textured sound, mangled beats, shredding noise, drones… the bloody lot. It’s like spending an hour and a half inside the mind of a genius/lunatic nutty professor.

From the opening minutes, ‘Find any tape header’ is thrillingly unpredictable. A cheapo dog barking synth sound plays the Doctor Who theme alongside grunting animals and cries of “The Insane sausage Maker”. Then onto comical disruptions of Satie, into manic synth noise that sounds like an electronic music studio being thrown down a flight of stairs and trampled on by a herd of cyborg elephants trying to play deconstructed techno. Then there’s the bagpipes that come before the strange gurgling and hammered bells. A brutal, pummeling, industrial tech-noise assault follows, which precedes a passage that sounds like some primitive/ alien machine language - and we’re still on the first side!

Flip the tape and some relentless, monotone rhythms and icy drones then get to work, before some shimmering, metallic, lysergic, spacey ambient soothes into the glistening chimes of some gorgeous, meditative deep listening. But don’t get too comfortable because you’re about to get smacked up with some classy intricate, damn funky beats that play out a mesmerising crunchy, serpentine rhythm. Up next is some mucky, grungy electro-sludge and… wait for it… an astonishing pair of hyperactive, laugh out loud hilarious videogame rave style covers of Men At Work’s ‘Land Down Under’ that have to be heard to be believed.

These few paragraphs barely scratch the surface of what’s on offer on this incredible tape, from an incredible mind. Edition of 100 copies with letterpress artwork."

Friday, 8 April 2016

The choice of Carrier:Modulator (C:M) frequency ratio is an interesting area of research, because it is one of the fundamental aspects of FM programming. Although I mentioned the classic book by Chowning & Bristow in the recent Matrixsynth NYZ DRN4 DECLASSIFIED, space and time didn't allow me to mention another classic text by Barry Truax: Organizational Techniques for C:M Ratios in Frequency Modulation. If you're interested in FM programming, and you don't mind a tiny bit of maths via the Farey Sequence, I highly recommend it. If you want to dig deeper I've made some useful tables for FM synth programmers in this post. There's also a handful of youtube FM synthesis vids at the end.

about

about

This is the first release by NYZ and is a superb musical collection of research areas classified to internal Noyzelab operations. Not even .MEDS label were informed of the secret processes underlying its creation, excepting that we know it involved Frequency Modulation (FM) synthesis! We have not been given any information regarding when this work was recorded, but we suspect the material spans at least a decade of David's FM algorithm research on numerous synthesizers, as well his own custom built ear deceiving gear... For additional information and photos see the Matrixsynth "NYZ DECLASSIFIED" article.

According to one reviewer of David's previous musical output he "gleefully disrupts just about every standard convention of musical form you could think of, including those of so-called experimental musics."Other reviewers have written that :"His music is a bizarre, yet compelling journey investigating the outer realms of music generated on ancient & contemporary machines." "It's strikingly original audio that doesn't really sound like anything else I can think of." "Utterly sublime. So there you go, a life-affirming slab of mind-altering sound to reawaken you to the terrifying possibilities of creation.""absolutely wreaks havoc" wrote Keith Fullerton Whitman on reviewing David's last release (T. H. Cycle cassette on Important Records/Cassauna).

BIO:

David Burraston is an award winning artist/scientist working in the areas of technology and electronic music since the late 1970s. His experimental arts practice encompasses field recording, landscape-scale sound art, chaos/complexity, sound synthesis and electronic music. He performs, lectures, conducts workshops and creates art installations in Regional NSW and around the world. David also designs and builds sound synthesizers based on his theories of chaos/complexity science.

(David Burraston. Photo by Richard D. James.)

He has previously released his highly original form of experimental research music on numerous cult labels such as ALKU (in collaboration with RUSSELL HASWELL), IMPORTANT RECORDS/CASSAUNA, TAIGA, .MEDS, CATACLYST, ENGRAVED GLASS, TOCHNIT ALEPH, BETA BODEGA COALITION, SEVCOM EDITION and featured in THE WIRE MAGAZINE Below The Radar series. He has worked with many diverse collaborators such as Aphex Twin, William Barton, Alan Lamb, Chris Watson, Russell Haswell, Robin Fox, Oren Ambarchi, Garry Bradbury, MIT Media Lab and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2014 he independently published the legendary "SYROBONKERS!", the most technical and in-depth interview ever given by Aphex Twin.

David had an innovative role in the foremost UK telco’s R&D laboratory in diverse areas such as Artificial Life, Chaos and Complex Systems, Spatial Audio, Virtual Reality and Data Visualisation. His 2006 PhD thesis (Generative Music & Cellular Automata) developed and applied fundamental new concepts, arising out of generative music practice, to a key problem in complex systems. This has served as a foundation methodology for creative practice and complex systems research.

His current work is aimed at tackling more key questions in complex systems from a creative practice perspective, drawing inspiration from natural and artificial complex systems. These key questions address the definition of randomness, structure and high level descriptions of information processing in complex systems.

David is a founding member of the Electronic Music Foundation Institute (www.emf.org). He was part of the team that designed and built long wire installations at The WIRED Lab and is a member of the Board of Directors (www.wiredlab.org). He has been operating Noyzelab as an independant art/science music studio since 1981 (www.noyzelab.com) and to the surprise of many is even on twitter @noyzelab

credits

releases April 1, 2016

All Audio by David Burraston
Design Tom Knapp

NORMAN RECORDS STAFF REVIEW OF NYZ DRN 4 ->

9/10 Jim Staff review, 27 March 2016

"NYZ is the latest alias of David Burraston (aka Noyzelab, Dave Noyze, Bryen Telko), an Australia-based sound scientist who you may have come across from his previous tape on .meds, ‘16x16 Cell Meditations’, or his other releases on Alku, Important Records’ Cassauna offshoot, Taiga, Cataclyst and The Wire magazine’s ‘Below The Radar’ series, among others. He’s also the guy behind ‘Syrobonkers!', a sprawling in-depth discussion with Aphex Twin that managed to mix rarefied gear-talk and synth esoterica with hilarious anecdotes from the golden era of rave, all spiked with a healthy dose of conspiracy theory.

You never know quite what you’re going to get with each Burraston release, apart from the fact that it’s likely to be an intense ride to the outer limits of what you thought music could be. This tape kinda of picks up where ‘16x16 Cell Meditations’ left off, featuring massive swathes of dense abstract walls of electronic sound that pulsate in mesmerising layered patterns. The music has an incredible sleight-of-hand effect, where you might find yourself being drawn in by what might initially sound a bit like a giant turbine generator before becoming enveloped into the fabric of the sound waves, which in turn unleash all manner of psychoactive aural allusions. Which is basically what happened to me straight from the off with the first track here ‘NYZ_FMMGKSQ_43t’.

It starts with two deep drones playing off each other with exuberant reverberating vibrations that had me thinking of jet engines before it hits a rocking groove and layers of high pitched textures seem to intensify, giving me visions of some UFO-summoning didgeridoo jam amongst screaming cicadas. But don’t let the cheesiness of my imagination put you off, this music is complex and strikingly fresh but at the same time seems to directly tap into those primitive patterning and image-generating faculties that so much psychedelic music aims (and often fails) to hit.

While the music is intensely minimal and abstract, Burraston’s focus on pulsating microtonal drones and immersive, full-frequency sound arrangements gives it a meditative feel, especially when compared to the Russell Haswell-style aggressive form-shredding of his ‘T.H. Cycle’ cassette on Important (Haswell is also a Burraston collaborator). Even the more abrasive and distorted tonality of ‘CSN [excerpt 2 mono]’ and it’s 45 minute perception-obliterating reprise on side 2 here have a hypnotic quality that is somewhere between the meditative end of Harsh Noise Wall and the more intense side of, say, Eliane Radigue; as implausible as that might sound. There are a few other departures along the way too, most notably ‘SWI_r170_16x32x32_B’, which envisions a dystopian industrial wasteland from piston-like hissings and decayed, malevolent synth-lines that seem to be self-generating in a way that somehow reminds of Dopplerffekt’s ‘Linear Accelerator’.

The last Noyzelab tape sold out fast so get this quick if you want a unique musical experience from a one-of-a-kind artist on blistering form."

Wednesday, 10 February 2016

Short review of the Roland Jupiter-8. Scanned from my copy of the ultra short lived magazine One.. Two.. TestingIssue No1 1982 (no author was credited in the review). Roland have got a current 4 voice version out called the JP-08 Sound Module.

disclaimer : i dont know who owns the copyright these days, at the time it was ipc magazines ltd.

Fractal Wire Thingies are electromagnetic wire instruments I've been developing that use fractals for their architecture, in particular a special case called space-filling curves. I've been fascinated with these algorithms since the 1980s, and have used them extensively with computers and synthesizers. I was interested to take this work into the electro-acoustic domain to create a more visual and tactile instrument.

I built these prototypes in late 2011 as a proof of concept, and to establish a relatively simple construction process. These photo's were taken during and just after construction. I was driving them with my custom microtonal oscillators, the deadly oscillator, some old keyboards, and soundfiles via the laptop. This lot were sent through a power amplifer to drive the fractal wire section + some self built bits for recording/feedback: piezo contact mics and little field tube pre-amps. The rare earth neodymium magnets are a mixture from old hard disc drives, as well as some new cyclindrical ones and are: super high strength watch your fingers because you will get blood blisters or worse when they come back togeth.. er... !

Eventually I would like to scale up these fractal space-filling curve based electromagnetic wire instruments to full size long wire instruments, such as those used in Rainwire (where they would capture an even larger geo-spatial area).

Keen Aphex Twin spotters will remember these got a mention in the Noyzelab Syrobonkers! interview. More on Fractal Wire Thingies at some point... I'll post another bunch soon when I get time.

about noyzelab

David Burraston is an artist/scientist involved in technology and electronic music since the late 1970s. He had an innovative role in the foremost UK telco’s R&D laboratory (BT Research Laboratories) in diverse areas such as Artificial Life, Complex Systems, Virtual Reality, Spatial Audio and Information Visualisation. He was part of the team that designed and built 'The Wires' installations at The WIRED Lab.
His PhD thesis developed and applied fundamental new concepts, arising out of generative music practice, to a key problem in complex systems. He has been operating Noyzelab as an independent art/science music studio since 1981.